Human Element

by AJ Powers

  “Go!” Hadas said, tapping on the stopwatch button.

  Aaran pressed down on the magazine release of the pistol while he wrenched the slide back. The ejected magazine—which was fully loaded—bounced off the floor with a heavy thunk while Aaran’s hand was already moving to his jacket pocket. Grasping the fresh mag, he swung his hand up, inserted the magazine, and racked the slide once more; his gun was hot.

  “Time!”

  Hadas clicked the button on the stopwatch and stared down at the display. “Think you did it this time?” she asked with a smirk.

  “Oh, yeah,” Aaran said, his voice bursting with confidence.

  Her grin widened and she subtly shook her head. “Still more than a half second behind.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!” Aaran said in disbelief as he verified the numbers for himself. He had spent hours doing jam drills, ever since he lost a bet to Hadas after their dinner two nights ago. She’d quickly cashed in on her winnings, forcing Aaran to be her personal masseuse for over two hours while she watched some show filled with fast-talking women that made almost no sense to him. Having been around guns his whole life, Aaran had been certain that he would have been the one enjoying the back rub that night. But pride came before the fall, and the cramps still plaguing his hands were the reminder.

  Hadas’s firearm skills were impressive, particularly when it came to quick reloads and clearing jams. Both of which might be the difference between life and death in the world they lived in. And as Aaran had found out, he was not nearly as talented as he’d thought. Fortunately for him, he had not needed to rely on such do-or-die skills out on the road. Yet.

  “I’m taking you down next time,” he said as he bent over to pick up the ejected magazine laying at his feet.

  “Sure you will,” she replied before tossing the stopwatch onto the leather couch.

  Despite his disdain for losing, especially to a girl, Aaran enjoyed the camaraderie he had developed with Hadas. It sure beat the friendship he had cultivated with Orson, the giant, fuzzy spider who’d built an impressive web inside the ranch house Aaran had stayed in for nearly a week at the beginning of spring. The months immediately following the purge had been particularly brutal as Aaran had adjusted to life without human contact. After his time with Hadas, he decided that he would never live alone again. Whether she liked it or not.

  “Well, should we head out?” Aaran asked as he slid his USP back into his holster.

  “Yeah, my backpack is on the bed. Let me go grab it. Then we can hit the road,” she said, turning and heading for the stairs.

  Aaran and Hadas were going for a supply run. Having decided to hunker down for the winter, they would need to remedy the empty pantries and dwindling medical supplies at their disposal. Neither of them were particularly excited about doing a food run in single-digit temps during a snowstorm, so they planned to collect enough food and materials to last them through February. Aaran was optimistic that they could solve the food shortage in just a few days.

  Water on the other hand…

  There wasn’t a great long-term solution for hydration. Once the bottled water ran dry, they would need to have a reliable fallback plan. Aaran had already rigged the gutters so that the downspouts poured directly into five-gallon buckets, but the rainy season was already behind them and he didn’t expect to get much. They would be able to capitalize off snowfall, but that, too, was unreliable. That left daunting trips to the creek. Aaran didn’t mind the walk up and down the gravel road, but he dreaded traversing the steep banks in and out of the creek. He was working on a few ideas to help streamline the process so that he wouldn’t have to make the climb back up with only a couple of gallons to show for his effort. But he wasn’t about to try and negotiate the steep grade with a five-gallon bucket, either.

  They still had about five days’ worth of fluids to work with, so water could be tomorrow’s problem. Today, Aaran was psyched for their outing. He enjoyed scavenging. Though there was always a blanket of angst that accompanied him when going outside, there was also a dose of exhilaration and mystery that he enjoyed when searching through people’s homes. It was a little less exciting to know that their survival depended on what they found, but he was eager all the same.

  Besides food, water, and medical supplies, Aaran hoped to find a few tanks of propane. While not necessary to their survival, a hot meal boosted morale; something they’d realized the other night. The fuel gauge connected to the propane tank’s regulator had it sitting just above a quarter tank, which wouldn’t last them very long into winter. Using charcoal was out of the question. The strong smell and a decent amount of smoke would create a bit too much unwanted attention. If they couldn’t find more propane, it would be cold beans and exceptionally al dente rice for dinner every night.

  Hadas was pulling her hair back when she came down the stairs, twisting a hair tie around her fingers as she snapped her hair into a ponytail. “Your bag empty?”

  Aaran reached behind and tapped his backpack. “Just some extra ammo and a few bottles of water.

  “All right. Let’s hit it.”

  Aaran drew his first breath outside and used it to grumble about the cold. It had taken him the better part of a month to get used to living in a perpetual state of cold, but after only a couple of warm nights in the house, his body had forgotten how to cope with the dropping temperatures. Exchanging the balmy sixty-three degrees inside for the biting cold outside was not something Aaran’s body was prepared to handle, and it violently shuddered in protest. He did some squats to get the blood circulating while Hadas shut the door behind them. After flexing his freezing fingers, Aaran made a mental note to keep an eye out for a good pair of gloves.

  “So, should we start looking for some neighbors? Or just go straight for the grocery store and leave the neighbors for the middle of winter?” Hadas asked.

  “Neighbors. No point traveling into town and further exposing ourselves if the neighbors have enough to keep us afloat for the winter.”

  Hadas agreed. Though it had been over a week since the incident back at the shoe store and the activity near town was minimal, there was no need to remind the Nebula that they were nearby. It made the most sense to start close and expand their search rather than the other way around.

  The pair walked down the driveway and turned down on the gravel road, heading away from the creek. It was nearly ten minutes before they spotted another house. “How far does it have to be before ‘neighbor’ turns into ‘the next closest house’?” Aaran joked, remembering that even out in the sticks where he had used to live, he could’ve seen five different houses from his front porch.

  “This is nothing. My grandpa used to live in Montana. Sometimes, your closest neighbor lived in the next county over,” she chuckled.

  “That sounds awesome,” Aaran replied. He had always wanted to own a large plot of land out in a rural state like Montana or Wyoming.

  “I only remember visiting him a few times before he died. It’s gorgeous out there, but if you think the winters here suck…”

  “Hmm,” Aaran replied, forgetting to factor in his contempt for the bitter cold. “Maybe Texas would be a better fit for me.”

  “Hook ‘em horns,” Hadas replied, reciting the slogan for her father’s alma mater.

  The chatter died down as they approached the first of three houses visible from the road. Aaran press checked his Scorpion, seeing glints of the late-morning sun reflecting off the chambered cartridge. Hadas did the same with her Tavor as she veered off the road, cutting through the field in front of a house that was still a few football-fields away.

  Aaran kept his eyes glued to the second-floor windows, while Hadas watched for activity at ground level. They agreed that if either one so much as saw a curtain flinch, they would scrub the mission and head home, taking the scenic route back to make sure they weren’t being followed.

  All was still.

  They stepped lightly when they walked through the unlocked f
ront door. They were immediately greeted by the all-too-familiar sights and smells of a home that hadn’t been lived in for nearly a year. The only reason Aaran even noticed it anymore was that a lack of it was often a telling sign for human activity. Undisturbed dust buildup was a good indicator that the house was abandoned. The stale air from a closed up home only reaffirmed their speculation. A quick but cautious sweep of the house confirmed it—it was empty.

  Like the house they’d recently claimed as their own, Aaran noticed a lack of Christmas décor that he was accustomed to seeing just about everywhere he went. Except for the few Christmas cards hanging on the refrigerator door, there was no indication that the world had ended on December 23rd last year.

  “Wonderful…” Hadas said, her tone less than enthusiastic. “This pantry is pretty skimpy, too.”

  Aaran walked across the kitchen and looked over Hadas’s shoulder. There was some food, but not a lot of it. It didn’t look like the house had already been scavenged by survivors, rather it just looked like the owners hadn’t gone grocery shopping in a while. “Maybe these people went to Florida for the winter, too,” Aaran thought aloud.

  They moved the contents of the pantry over to the small dining room table, quickly covering the surface with stored goods. Though it was not the haul they’d been hoping for, the kitchen fared better than the one back home. There were several dozen cans of food, a few boxes of pasta, and even a couple of bags of rice. Aaran got excited when Hadas retrieved a jar of tomato sauce hidden behind a bag of sugar. Thinking back to all the times he’d slurped cold, rubbery spaghetti noodles out of a can, Aaran was overwhelmed with the notion he’d be getting the real deal sometime soon.

  They carefully inspected the items, weeding out a couple of dented cans and one that felt a bit too bulbous for their comfort. The dented cans were probably safe to consume, but botulism was a potentially fatal diagnosis, even with access to quality medical care. It wasn’t worth the risk for two barely-adults with access to some Band-aids and ibuprofen. And Aaran wasn’t even sure he would have chosen to keep the cans had there been no risk at all; the cans were filled with chick peas. However, Hadas seemed to actually entertain the thought of keeping the food for a moment before rational thinking overruled.

  Splayed out on the table, it looked like a lot more food than when it had been stacked in the pantry. Though it was going to take a couple of trips to get everything back home, it was maybe a few weeks’ worth of food. It was a good start, but the next houses needed to up the ante a bit, or they’d be forced to go into town before too long.

  With his pack bursting at the seams before he’d finished searching the house, Aaran set the pack next to the front door, continuing his search. He moseyed to the utility room separating the house from the garage where he spotted two cases of bottled water on the floor next to the sink basin. His muscles were already aching at the thought of lugging the cases back home, but the more water they could stockpile, the fewer trips to the creek they would have to make when winter was at its angriest.

  Hadas poked her head through the door. “So, I saw a safe upstairs when I was clearing the master bedroom. You wanna come check it out?”

  “Sure.”

  The master bedroom was neat and tidy, and minimally decorated. The large room was severely under-furnished for its size with just a bed, a dresser, and a gun safe taking up the space. Aaran walked up to the dresser and looked at the two picture frames resting on top, one on each side. The one on the left was of a happy, young couple standing at the altar. The woman, a beautiful, glowing blond girl, who probably wasn’t even legal to drink at her own reception, smiling brightly in her white gown as she proudly stood next to her new husband in his Marine formals. The happy moment stood in harsh contrast to the picture frame on the other side of the dresser. It was a picture of her smiling husband. He had traded in his Marine fatigues for a police officer’s uniform, but about three-quarters of the way down the picture was a thick black stripe, a thin blue line running across the middle. The overlaid white text stated:

  End of watch November 16. Rest easy, brother. We’ll take it from here.

  He had died a little over a month before the takeover. Suddenly, the lack of Christmas decorations and lean pantry made more sense. It had probably been difficult to find the Christmas spirit after watching your spouse get lowered into the ground. The small, dresser-top memorial had a gut-punching effect on Aaran. He wiped away a tear before swallowing his emotions. After clearing his throat, he turned around and found Hadas investigating the safe. “Think you can pick it?” he asked, trying to make his voice sound stronger than he felt.

  “Doubt it. This isn’t like a deadbolt or even a padlock,” Hadas said as she inspected the ace cam lock on the door. “Maybe the key’s around here somewhere,” she said as she walked over to the dresser and started rifling through the drawers.

  While Hadas looked for the key, Aaran stepped into the master bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. He took everything that looked remotely useful and filled one of his cargo pockets. Then, he opened the cabinet doors beneath the sink. There were bottles of rubbing alcohol and peroxide near the back that were begging to be taken. His elbow bumped the cabinet door when he reached inside, causing an object hanging on a hook inside to jingle around.

  Aaran stared at the shiny, metallic object as it clanked off the wooden door. “No…Life’s just not that easy,” he muttered with a hefty dose of skepticism. A keyring with a tubular key attached was hanging on an adhesive hook, and it looked like it might just fit the safe. Though he doubted it was the right key, it was worth a shot. Lifting the key off the hook, Aaran quietly stood up and walked back into the bedroom. The floor and bed were littered with women’s clothes and other personal effects as Hadas tossed everything from the drawers over her shoulders. He couldn’t help but feel a bit guilty that Hadas was invading the widow’s privacy like that. Though, Aaran assumed that memories and sentiments from a Webber’s past were no longer of concern to them. Perhaps that’s not such a bad thing for her, Aaran thought, figuring she wouldn’t have cared that they were rifling through her belongings.

  Hadas was tearing through the last drawer when Aaran quietly inserted the key into the lock and turned it. He shook his head in disbelief when the lock disengaged. He grabbed the handle and gave it a twist. Before opening the door, Aaran turned around to look at Hadas, who was wearing a look of astonishment on her face. Aaran smiled, “I guess this might have been a challenge to a novice lock picker such as yourself, but when you have an expert like me around…” His smile went ear to ear.

  Hadas shook her head and crossed her arms. “Yeah…Where’d you find the key?”

  “No key,” he lied, and terribly at that, as he stealthily slipped the key into his pocket.

  She rolled her eyes as she walked over. “Sure...”

  Aaran waited for Hadas to come over before opening the door. When she arrived, he bounced his eyebrows up and down, the excitement written all over his face. “You ready?”

  An overwhelming sense of joy filled the air when the light from the windows spilled into the safe. Inside was a Savage FCP-SR in 6.5 Creedmoor; the rifle’s optics easily worth as much as the gun itself. It had a customized tactical stock, a fluted barrel, and a two-stage AccuTrigger. Next to that was an AR-15 with a Trijicon ACOG scope mounted to the top. On the other side of the safe rested a Mossberg 590 and a little Ruger 10/22. The door had several pockets for pistols, but only one was filled—a Canik TP9sf with a threaded barrel.

  On top of that, there were nearly twenty AR-15 magazines—each one filled to capacity—and several dozen boxes of ammunition.

  Even for those uneducated in weaponry, there was no denying they had just stumbled onto a tactical goldmine.

  Hadas put her hand on Aaran’s shoulder and chuckled. “I guess Christmas is coming early for us this year.”

  Chapter 27

  Aaran was jolted from his deep sleep by the sound of pots and pans clattering
off the tile floor in the kitchen. His body trembled, but he didn’t know if that was from being startled awake or from the nightmare he had been enduring. He couldn’t remember anything about the dream, and the sick feeling he had in his stomach told him to be grateful for that.

  Hadas leaned out of the kitchen and made an apologetic face when she saw Aaran’s eyes were open. “Sorry about that. I opened the cabinet and they all just fell out.”

  “It’s all right,” Aaran replied, “I need to get up anyway or I’ll never fall asleep tonight.”

  Aaran’s words brought relief to Hadas, but only slightly. She knew firsthand how miserable it was to wake up to loud, chaotic sounds, especially these days. “Okay, well, I’m warming up some stew. You hungry?”

  “Does a one-legged duck swim in circles?”

  Hadas rolled her eyes and shook her head before disappearing back into the kitchen.

  With his heart rate finally returning to human levels, Aaran stretched out on the comfortable leather couch in the living room, his muscles reminding him of the week’s labor. The pain was the result of their good fortune, but that didn’t make him any less sore.

  Neither of them had been terribly optimistic after the bounty they had collected on the first day of scavenging. After emptying the widow’s house—save a few dented cans of chick peas—they’d made their way over to the next closest neighbor. Within fifty feet of the place, they’d both realized it had been abandoned for several years. And as expected, the inside had turned up little more than empty beer bottles, soiled blankets, and enough hypodermic needles to keep a hospital going for a month.

  “I feel like I need a tetanus shot straight to the lungs just for breathing the air in there,” Hadas had said as they’d walked back out onto the porch, her commentary summing up Aaran’s perceptions perfectly.

  Though the abandoned house had been a bust, they’d been able to scrounge up some loot at the next house: more canned goods, a few bags of snacks, and a twenty-four pack of soda that was six cans light. Aaran had also found a nearly-full tank of propane, which had been as equally exciting as the soda discovery.